


Self-Made, Artificially Created

by Wish_I_Had_A_Tail



Category: X-23 (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Child Abuse, Developing Friendships, Gen, Human Experimentation, I will pick and choose from canon as I please, different tenses in different chapters, implied self harm (canonical), it's hard to be around new people, mutant teens, relationships I thought were underexplored, social struggles, the facility
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-03-07 01:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18862867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wish_I_Had_A_Tail/pseuds/Wish_I_Had_A_Tail
Summary: A collection of vignettes about Laura Kinney at different points in her life (mainly focused on her time at the Xavier Institute as a student, around New X-men era).Will be adding new stories as I write them!





	1. Chapter 1

“You’re full of shit,” Victor says right as Laura comes into earshot. She approaches the table with her tray of food and takes a seat. Some of the students greet her with a nod.

“Bet you five bucks,”Cessily insists. She is holding an apple, passing it from one to the other without ever taking a bite.

“You’re on.”

Laura sees a way to enter the conversation, and jumps on it. “What are you betting on?” she asks, taking a bite of her stir-fry. It’s so spicy she almost tears up. Cessily doesn’t take her challenging gaze away from Victor.

“I think Storm is sleeping with Nightcrawler.”

“And _I_ call bullshit on that,” Victor says cheerfully.

“I’m with Victor,” Julian adds. “I don’t think she is.”

“She is,” Laura says around a mouthful of food. All eyes at the table turn to her. She thinks maybe they hadn’t understood her, so she swallows and repeats herself. “She is,” Laura says with a loud, clear voice.

“How do you know?” Noriko demands.

“I can smell them on each other,” Laura says helpfully. “And I heard them one night,” she adds.

“You listened to them having sex?” Julian prompts.

She can sense an uncomfortable edge to the question, the implication she overstepped some line. She’s fairly confident she hadn’t, though, this time. “Yes.” Laura endures some raised eyebrows before clarifying, “Not intentionally. I was just walking to my room.”

The eyebrows settle back into place, and Laura relaxes. Cessily beams at Victor, triumphant. He reaches into his wallet, unzips a pocket, and starts to pull out quarters. Cessily makes a face as they begin to pile up on the table.

“Just transfer it to me,” she says, annoyed. He grins and continues stacking coins.

“Who else is sleeping together?” Noriko asks, curious. Laura thinks about it.

“Cyclops and Emma Frost.”

“Well _yeah_ , we knew _that_.”

“No one else that I know of,” she says regretfully. Cessily slides the quarters into her palm and pockets them.

“It’s so unfair,” Noriko complains, “we’re not allowed to have sex in the mansion, but the teachers can?”

“I don’t think that’s an official rule,” Victor says.

Julian chimes in, “No, I think it is.”

“I bet they like, break all the rules they give us,” Noriko continues as if she hadn’t heard him. “I bet they like drink and do drugs all the time.”

Cessily grins. “You think the X-men get high?”

“I would if I was them,” Victor says.

“You’ve never done drugs in your life.”

“I didn’t say I _had_ , I said I _would_ if I was an X-man.”

“Cess, would drugs even work on you?” Noriko asks.

Cessily looks down, contemplative, at the apple in her hand. Her skin reflects the light better than its shiny red peel. “I think some do. I know there’s one anaesthetic that kinda does, so some might, I guess? But I don’t know.” She turns to Laura. “What about you, Laura?” she asks, deflecting the conversation away from herself. “You can’t really get drunk, can you get high?”

What Laura likes most about the other young mutants is that their conversations make her think about things she had never even considered on her own. “I don’t know,” Laura admits. “I have never taken recreational drugs.”

“What about anaesthesia? Does it work on you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve never been put under?” Nori prods.

“No.”

“What do you mean?” Nori frowns. “Didn’t they put you under when they did your claws?”

Laura falters for a fraction of a second. “No.”

A silence descends on the table. Cessily looks at her with her lips parted in horror. For a while, no one says anything. Laura starts in on her salad.

“Would you be willing to try?” Nori finally breaks the silence. “Not anaesthesia,” she hurriedly corrects. “But, like, weed.”

Laura looks up at her. “Okay.”

***

“I think,” Laura says out of nowhere, “that it is taking effect.”

Cessily grins at her. “Yeah?” Laura looks at her and smiles back, broadly.

“Yes,” she says after a slightly too long pause. She leans back until she is leaning into Sooraya’s legs behind her on the couch, and stays there. Sooraya’s brows shoot up, surprised.

“Comfy?” she asks.

“Yes.”

Noriko giggles. “I feel it too. Cess?”

“I guess weed’s another for the no pile,” Cessily says with a tinge of disappointment. She smiles through it. “Sooraya and I will just watch you all act like idiots.” Sooraya holds out her palm, and Cessily grins, stretches the mass of her arm across the room, and slaps it.

Julian slides down onto the floor and sprawls out on his back. “If we get caught…” he begins, then trails off.

“We won’t get caught,” Victor insists. He is hugging his knees to his chest, leaning against the couch on the floor beside Laura. “We just have to stay in this room until we’re all cool. We should be fine by morning.”

Julian looks at him with glassy eyes. “What if someone attacks?”

Victor considers for a moment. “Then I guess we die.”

In a fit of sudden boldness, Sooraya puts her hand on the top of Laura’s head. Laura shuts her eyes in contentment.

“Vic,” Julian begins, doing his best to sink somehow further into the floor, “Can I ask you something?”

Victor looks at him crookedly. “Okay.”

“Does it ever bug you that your arms don’t match?” He waits half a second for an answer, and continues, “Because, man, that would annoy the crap out of me. I’d cut off the other one to even them out.”

Noriko bursts into laughter. “You’re crazy, Keller!”

“I’m not gonna cut off another arm,” Victor says, scowling. “Don’t touch my arm.” He hugs it protectively to his chest.

“He’s kidding,” Cessily assures him.

“I’m not kidding. I think you should.”

“I don’t think you should cut off your arm,” Laura says disapprovingly. Then she adds, “I like your asymmetry.”

He turns, surprised. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She doesn’t hesitate to answer. “It is distinctive.”

Noriko bursts into laughter. Julian snorts. “I’d say he’s pretty easy to pick out in a crowd even without it.”

“Shut up, Keller.”

“I’m with Laura,” Cessily says. “Don’t cut off your arm.”

“I agree,” Sooraya adds.

“I wasn’t considering it,” Victor says, exasperated.

Noriko giggles. “I vote yes.”

“We aren’t voting!” Victor’s sclerae are turning a dusky pink. “One amputation was enough for me, thanks.”

“I have had limbs cut off…” Laura pauses. “six times.”

“Oh my God,” Cessily gasps, at the same time that Noriko asks, “Six times each, or six limbs total?”

“Total.”

“Dr. McCoy has a theory,” Sooraya offers, “that if I had a limb amputated, I only need to turn to my sand form before the separation is complete. And then I can reform whole.”

“Wicked,” Julian says. “Like a sneaky healing factor.”

“Yes, exactly!”

Cessily, entirely sober, dutifully stands and passes the bowls of snacks around the room. Everyone takes large handfuls and by the time she has sat back down the bowls are mostly empty. She sets them in the middle of everyone anyways.

“Julian,” Sooraya asks, reconsidering. “will you please pass me that bowl? I would like more.”

“I don’t really think I can get up.”

She blinks at him for a moment, stares as if she can’t determine whether or not he is serious. “If only you had some sort of genetically encoded ability to move objects using only your mind.”

He lolls his head in her direction and flails his arm in a way that was likely meant to be dismissive. The bowl shakes once, twice, then is still. “You didn’t even have any pot,” he protests, giving up. She raises a brow.

“So I’m not entitled to food? I chose to spend my evening babysitting you all.”

“ _Please,_ ” Cessily snorts, standing up again to bring her the bowl. “You didn’t want to train.” Sooraya lifts her niqab with one hand and sneaks the food under it to her mouth with her other. She grins with her mouth full, and doesn’t contradict her. She returns her hand to the warm crown of Laura’s head, and she sighs softly under her palm.

“I used to like that when I was a kid,” Nori says. Laura looks at her, and she puts her own hand on her head to indicate what she’s referring to.

“Me too,” Laura says.

“My mom used to do it,” Nori continues.

“My sensei,” Laura says fondly.

Cessily exchanges a brief, pointed look with Sooraya. “Like, in the Facility?” she asks hesitantly.

“Yes.” Laura indulges in a flash of memory. “He went against orders. He was kind to me.”

“He went against orders?” Cessily repeats.

“Yes.”

“But they didn’t, like, fire him?”

Laura is silent for a while. “I killed him,” she says, and her voice breaks, just a little at the end. She is maybe the most surprised in the room to hear such clear emotion in her own voice. She hadn’t even noticed herself becoming sad, but now she feels her stomach clenching and her eyes burning with tears. She wills them away. Sooraya’s hand adjusts a little on the top of her head.

“They made you,” Julian says. He doesn’t turn his head to look at her, keep his eyes on the ceiling where they have been. “That’s what you mean.”

She is quiet for long seconds. “Yes,” she says slowly. “They made me.”


	2. Chapter 2

The door is opened, and Rice steps into her cell and tosses a bundle of fabric at her without a word. He stares expectantly at her until she stands up and retrieves it. Clothes. Not the stealth uniforms they brought her for missions, but civilian clothes. A grey t-shirt, underwear, jeans. She has never worn jeans before.

“Put them on,” Rice orders.

She changes into the clothes under his impatient gaze. The jeans are odd, restrictive. She shifts from foot to foot a few times, unaccustomed to the feeling. Then she stands there, waiting for further instruction. There is a low thrum of anticipation running through her at the prospect of leaving her cell.

“Follow me,” he says, turning. She does so eagerly. The quiet pad of her bare feet as she walks behind him is drowned out by the clicking and squeaking of his shoes against the tile. He checks at least once behind him to make sure she is still there. She looks curiously around for Dr. Kinney. X-23 hasn’t seen her in four days. And hadn’t seen her for two before that. She isn’t there. As they walk, X-23’s mind drifts. She tries to remember the poem her sensei taught her before she killed him. She gets through most of it before her memory fails.

Rice takes her to a room she has not been in before, and pauses just before he opens the door. He spins around, bends down, and looks her over. Her eyes follow his as they loom over her. After a moment, he adjusts her hair. Dr. Kinney did that sometimes. Less and less often nowadays.  She had put X-23’s hair into a little braid once, and Rice had been furious over it. She wonders if he also is thinking about that now. She is never sure what he is thinking.

Rice opens the door and she follows him inside. There is a Caucasian man standing there, hair more grey than brown, in a suit with a dark green tie. Fat. He smells of sweat. When he sees her, the smell gets stronger.

“This is an unusual request,” Rice says to him, “but here you are.”

The man’s eyes dart down to X-23. She looks back at him. “That’s it?” he says. “That’s her?”

“Yes, Mr. Stuart, this is Weapon X-23.”

He comes closer and crouches down, looking her over. X-23 is not certain what he is looking for. The clients have never asked to see her in person before, at least not before she had killed whoever it was they wanted her to kill.

“How old is she?”

“Nearly twelve.”

The man squints at her. “She killed Janos?”

“She did. When no one else could get to him. In a matter of days, she tracked him down and disposed of him. Efficient, discreet, and untraceable.”

She had had to torture three people to find the safehouse. The first led her to the next, who led her to the one that finally told her where it was. Each one had multiple bodyguards, all armed. One of them had shot her nose off. The mission had taken her a full day longer than she’d been allotted.

Rice had been displeased.

The man stands back up but does not take his eyes off her. “She’s… small,” he says. “I don’t remember the first one being so short.”

“The original Weapon X was five foot three,” Rice informs him.

“And she is?”

Rice’s jaw twitches. “Just under five feet,” he admits.

“Guess that’s what happens when you deviate from the source material,” the man says with a smirk. Rice smiles tightly.

“She may still grow.”

X-23 knows she is shorter than Weapon X was. She knows she is weaker. An inferior product, Rice has called her before. A pale imitation of an abomination of nature.

“All right, let’s see ‘em,” the man says with a sigh. Rice turns and looks at her. She looks back. There is a pause.

“X-23,” Rice says, “show us your claws.”

She pops all six out at once, and the man’s eyes glitter with interest. “Now the foot claws are an improvement.”

X-23 feels a pleasant stirring at the assessment. An _improvement_. Not inferior at all.

“Show me how she heals,” the man demands. Rice nods to X-23. She slices a gash across her arm, and it knits together in seconds. An average of 3.6 seconds, she remembers from the most recent measurement. She is timed twice a month. Her healing is only getting faster.

“Cut off your ear,” Rice says. She moves her hair out of the way and complies quickly. She has learned by now to do it in one cut to avoid pain. Stuart watches in enthralled silence until it has fully regenerated. Laura looks at the ear she is holding in her hand. Not sure what to do, she slides it into the pocket of her jeans. Blood starts to dry in the lines it drew down her neck. Her own scent in the room drowns out the smell of the man’s sweat.

“Damn,” Stuart says finally. “Faster than he was, I think.”

“Yes. And far better trained. Less reckless, more knowledgeable. Whoever you need taken care of,” Rice assures him, “she can do it. She _will_ do it.”

Stuart nods to himself, then looks at Rice and sticks out his hand. “I’ll take her.” Rice shakes it, and the man picks up the briefcase he was holding and hands it to him.

Rice walks her back to her cell and tells her, “Mission tomorrow.”

She had assumed as much.

“That man saw the original Weapon X in action,” he continues. “This is an important one. Fail, you’ll be severely punished. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Give me those clothes back.”

She strips and hands the fabric back without a word. Her regular clothes are still there, crumpled on the floor where she had left them, and she puts them back on the moment Rice leaves. Today is not a day for data collection, nor is there a mission or training to do. She reads. A book on explosives, in Japanese. A good way to study two things at once. Dr. Kinney does not visit her. Eventually the day ends. The lights go dark, and X-23 lies down to sleep. She hopes the mission tomorrow is long, or at the very least involves daytime espionage. She would like to see the sun.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Laura was not Sooraya’s first roommate at the Xavier Institute. She wasn’t even her second.

First, she’d been paired with Madison. Fourteen years old, blonde hair, gloss-sticky lips that quivered every time she was reprimanded in class or corrected in training. When she’d been told she would no longer have the room to herself, she’d looked up at Sooraya with enormous blue eyes, and Sooraya couldn’t tell if it was relief or disappointment she saw in them. She tapped at her phone almost constantly. Sometimes she would look angrily down at the little screen – sometimes she huffed a soft laugh through her nose and smiled. Either way, her fingers never slowed.

After two and a half weeks, she left a folded piece of notebook paper on Sooraya’s pillow before withdrawing from the institute. The note explained that she had decided to try being normal – and suggested Sooraya do the same.

She had watched from her window as Madison’s parents came for her. Storm and Cyclops had both come to plead with them to reconsider. It was too far for Sooraya to hear anything that was said. But she could guess from Storm and Cyclops’ postures, the gestures they made with their hands. And from the way the parents did not turn to look at them even once, loading suitcases into the trunk with the same hurried brusqueness as they did their daughter into the back seat. Cyclops’ shoulders had slumped the same way they did after a lost battle or a failed mission. Both of them had stood there and watched the car drive away.

Four days later there was a new set of suitcases on the other bed in Sooraya’s room. Noriko. Fifteen years old, blue hair, inexplicably hostile to everyone who tried to help her. She was intensely disapproving of what she called Sooraya’s life choices, and viciously insecure about her own lack of control over her powers. Neither of these made her easier to live with. As mutants, the youngsters at the Xavier institute had abilities people would call amazing – but patience was not one of Sooraya’s and knowing when to stop was certainly not one of Noriko’s.

After two excruciating months, when Mirage took her aside, she’d stopped listening past the words _new roommate._ Really, they could have told her she’d be sharing a room with Apocalypse himself and she would have happily agreed if Noriko was the alternative. Later, Cyclops had taken her aside and spoken to her in hushed tones about who exactly she would be living with. The story made Sooraya’s heart hurt.

“How long ago did she escape?” was the first thing she asked.

“Two years.”

“Where has she been living since then?”

Cyclops folded his hands and exhaled through his nose. “I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. He held himself like his back was tied to a metal plank. “Sooraya, so you understand. I don’t expect Laura to be the easiest person to live with. And I hope if there are issues, you feel comfortable enough to come to us about them so we can sort them out.” He threw out a lot of terms then, like _socially stunted_ and _confused sense of morality_ and _attachment difficulties._

He did not paint an optimistic picture. Sooraya appreciated the one-on-one talk, but she couldn’t help the bitter taste the conversation left in her mouth. It wasn’t a coincidence that a potentially dangerous new recruit was being paired with the only student in the school that had no parents around to complain about it.

But she agreed, and two days later Laura came to the institute with no luggage or belongings at all.

Laura. 15 years old, unbrushed black hair, so economical with words that Sooraya thought she was mute for the first full 12 hours of their acquaintance.

She watched Sooraya pray. Not with the mild curiosity of passersby or Noriko’s vague disapproval, but really watched, sat on her bed with her legs folded and stared with silent, rapt attention.

“Do you want to join me?” Sooraya asked her after the first few times. Laura’s blank green eyes sparked with surprise. She blinked, a bit taken aback, and seemed to genuinely think about it. Sooraya was not quite accustomed to her tendency for unreserved, transparent honesty.

“No,” she said at last.

“Are you sure?” Sooraya pressed. “I’ve just noticed you watching. You seem interested, maybe?”

She tilted her head just slightly and waited long enough to speak again that Sooraya thought maybe she just wouldn’t reply. “You would prefer I turn around while you pray,” she hazarded.

Sooraya frowned. “No, of course not.”

Laura nodded. “Okay.” And she continued to watch, and that was that.

For a few days, Sooraya waited for an incompatibility that never came. Laura was strange, but not in the ways Sooraya had expected. Nothing unmanageable. Not temperamental, never violent. She never once raised her voice. On occasions where she looked overwhelmed, she would disappear into the bathroom for long stretches of time, or run off into the woods and climb back through their window late at night, smelling of soil. When Sooraya asked, she said she liked to be outdoors.

For the most part they had were a good match as roommates. Showered at different times, woke up without waking the other. There wasn’t a morning Sooraya woke up for class that Laura wasn’t already gone. Sometimes she caught her sleeping on the floor. Sooraya didn’t ask.

 

There was one incident a few days in, when they’d returned to their room after a training session, sweaty and exhausted.

“You can shower first,” Sooraya said, setting her things down at her nightstand. She cricked her neck with a faint moan and took a moment to massage the sore muscles of her shoulders. Then she turned around to the sight of Laura’s naked body, with her clothes in a pile by her feet. The door was wide open. She darted around their beds to slam it shut. “Laura!” she cried out. “What are you doing?”

She blinked at her from where she stood, unhurriedly gathering up the pile of clothes to toss it into the laundry hamper. “Undressing,” she said.

“You left the door open.”

“Yes,” she agreed. Sooraya faltered, momentarily baffled.

“You’re naked.”

“Yes,” Laura said again. She was frowning.

Sooraya should probably have left it alone. “You can’t just leave the door open. Don’t you care if someone sees you?”

Laura’s eyes narrowed in a way that meant she was trying to puzzle something out. “No,” she admitted.

“No?” Sooraya repeated, incredulous. Laura pushed a tangled lock of hair out of her face.

“I will make sure to close the door if you are naked,” she offered.

It might have been the soreness and exhaustion, but Sooraya couldn’t hold back an irrational frustration at the bizarre way Laura continued to miss the point.

“You don’t want any _privacy_?” she blurted.

An expression flashed on Laura’s face then, a twitch of the brow that usually preceded her urgently fleeing the room and disappearing for the rest of the night. But instead, she held her ground. One hand tightened briefly into a fist, then relaxed.

“It is not something I have ever had.” At the confession, all of Sooraya’s irritation melted out of her. She looked at Laura, standing there calmly in the nude and waiting for her to respond, and didn’t doubt it for a second. Laura took her silence for incomprehension. “I grew up in a glass cell,” she added.

“I’m sorry,” Sooraya said, stunned. “Forgive me, I shouldn’t have pushed. It’s… I completely understand, Laura. I’m sorry,” she said again.

Laura turned around and walked into the bathroom without a word. After a moment’s hesitation, she creaked the door closed. Sooraya sat on her bed and took her head, mortified, into her hands as the water ran in the background. Laura never took very long to shower or get ready, and it wasn’t ten minutes until she emerged from the steam-filled room. She walked across the room and sat on her own bed for a thoughtful moment.

“I didn’t mean,” Sooraya began tentatively, “to make you feel…” She sighed. “I do things people find odd, too. I know how difficult it is being somewhere so new.”

Those words seemed to resonate with Laura. “In my cell,” she said almost defensively, “there was only one door. And it only opened or closed from the outside.”

“It really isn’t a big deal,” Sooraya said desperately. “I’m sorry that I made it into one.”

Laura shook her head, like that wasn’t the point. She looked Sooraya in the eyes and said earnestly, “I prefer living with you.”

It was an uncomfortably long time before Sooraya understood that as the compliment it was intended as. She fought back the urge to say something appalled.

“Well,” she said honestly, “you’re my favourite roommate so far, too.”

Laura was hard to read, and for a moment Sooraya thought she’d made a mistake. Then, cautiously, she smiled. Sooraya smiled back, with no small measure of relief. “I’m going to shower,” she announced, turning toward the bathroom. Laura called her name just before she shut the door.

“Sooraya.” She halfway turned back. Laura was leaning eagerly forward on the bed. “Who did you live with before?”

 

Sooraya wasn’t without her own peculiarities. She had the tendency to lose control in the night sometimes, if her dreams turned rough enough. Disassemble, swirl in formless clouds of sand around the room and whoosh fretfully through the air. She knew there was a risk it could happen. But it hadn’t for months, and so she wasn’t prepared when Laura woke them both up with her hacking coughs.

She’d slashed through Sooraya’s cloud of sand on terrified instinct before she realized what was happening. Pulling her shirt over her mouth and nose, she bounded off her bed and shook Sooraya to full alertness. Sooraya gathered herself violently together, the rapid lash of dust skinning Laura’s upper arm in the process. The skin reformed in seconds. When Sooraya was whole, she stared in horror at her and apologized profusely.

“It was an accident,” she babbled, “I didn’t – I’m so sorry, Laura. Are you okay?”

Laura nodded. She coughed painfully into her hand.

“I should have told you – I just, it almost never happens, forgive me.” She was waking up now, her head clearing rapidly.

“I forgive you,” Laura said raspily, already climbing back into bed. She let her shirt fall away from her face with a final cough.  “It is okay. I was told you had control over your powers.”

“I do,” Sooraya insisted. She planted her feet on the ground, elbows digging into her thighs so she could run her hands through her hair. She hadn’t realized until now that she’d woken up crying – appalled at herself, she wiped her tears quickly away. “It hasn’t happened in – it almost never happens. Only when… if I have a dream that’s…” she sniffled, angrily wiped her nose. When she looked back up, Laura was lying on her side, curled up under her blanket like she could fall back asleep at any moment. It was too dark to clearly see her face, but Sooraya could feel her eyes on her. She dragged her sleeve across her cheeks once more for good measure. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know,” Laura said coolly. “What did you dream of?”

“What?”

The raspiness was almost gone from Laura’s voice. “Your dream,” she repeated. “What did you dream of?"

Fresh tears spilled from Sooraya’s eyes at once. “My mother,” she said, and her voice was like shattered glass.

“Is she dead?”

“No,” Sooraya said, then looked upwards in exasperation, blinking feverishly. Salty tears slid down her throat as she laughed. “I don’t know.” Laura maintained her fixed stare on Sooraya as she wrestled with her words. “It’s silly, I – I have idiotic nightmares about things that haven’t happened. Or – ” she let out another bitter laugh, “maybe they have. I don’t know.”

Laura said nothing.

“I dream of these horrible scenarios,” Sooraya went on. She sniffed hard. “How can I not worry about my mother when I have not seen her for months? Wouldn’t anyone? Wouldn’t you?” She faltered, frozen by her own sudden slip of the tongue. “I’m sorry. You don’t –” she ran both her hands through her hair. “I am talking too much.”

Laura propped herself up on an elbow. “No.” Her tone was curious. “You are not.”

“She’s alive,” Sooraya said with sudden, brash certainty. “I always thought that she can survive anything. She’s clever, she’s –” Sooraya paused, suddenly self-conscious. Her heart was pounding. “Do you want to hear about her?”

“Yes,” Laura said without hesitation, and adjusted herself on the bed like she was settling in for a story.

Sooraya talked until her tears dried up and she could barely remember the specific details of her dream. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been speaking for until she stopped. Her heart had slowed. Laura hadn’t moved; for a second, Sooraya thought she might have fallen asleep.

“How often did you see her before you were separated?”

The question caught Sooraya off guard. “Every day,” she said.

The tone of Laura’s silence seemed to change. “I hope you find her alive,” she said after a while. It was so far from the platitudes Sooraya was used to that she nearly laughed.

“Thank you, Laura,” she said, grateful for the earnestness. “I miss her.” She lay down finally, head collapsing back onto the pillow and her arms crossed over her stomach. She pointedly avoided checking the time. Faint footsteps pattered through the house. Outside, the night was quiet. Sooraya’s eyes started to drift shut, when Laura spoke, unprompted, so quietly she almost missed it.

“I had a mother,” she said.

Sooraya’s eyes shot open. She turned onto her side, even though they couldn’t see each other in the dark.

“You did?” The past tense had not escape her notice.

“Yes,” Laura said, and her voice sounded faraway. “I miss her, too.”

“She… worked at the Facility?” Sooraya risked.

“Yes.” The single syllable was tense with dark implications. Sooraya turned back onto her back, staring up at the ceiling, entirely aghast.

“Do you want to tell me about her?”

“I want to sleep,” Laura said. Sooraya could not deny her own sharp relief.

“Okay,” she said. “Another time?” There was silence again, for long enough that this time Sooraya was sure Laura had drifted off.

“Okay,” Laura said.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

She reads what files she can, after she’d burned the place down. Whatever she manages to get her hands on. Much of it was destroyed in the fire, but not all – she’d managed to salvage some, or found people who had copies. Soot stained sheets of paper, speckled with blood. A few computerized files. Ones on other mutants, too – dispassionate, clinical accounts of people that had been ripped from their lives and thrown into a cell until their suffering was no longer academically valuable.

Mostly, Laura reads the ones on herself. Long sets of data, notes, proposals. Photographs. Formal reports of experiments, many of which she has entirely forgotten. More still that she remembers with vivid, screaming clarity. Rice’s name comes up the most – if not as an author, then as a signature at the bottom, or as an annotator making notes and suggestions in the margins of someone else’s work. Sometimes enough that angry pen marks overwhelm the initial text. Thinking back, Laura remembers last minute changes, scientists that had fastidiously prepared her for one test or another hesitating at the last second. Disagreeing over protocol, timing, dosages.

 _Hold on, Rice told me this way instead. When? This morning._ Laura always found these exchanges entertaining, garnered a spiteful glee watching their frustration from her slab. Rice’s crimes span the entire spectrum of human transgressions; they range from the destruction of lives to trite workplace annoyances. The documents he authored bear an administrative yellow letterhead.

The ones in green are Dr. Kinney’s.

Through the years, Laura has snuck glimpses of enough ID cards, overheard enough conversations to decode the hierarchy of scientists and doctors and trainers. She has no illusions as to what Dr. Kinney’s role had been. One of the Facility’s lead geneticists. Head scientist on the X-23 project. Laura remembers her behind the glass from time to time, observing. Sometimes directing.

It isn’t surprising to find nearly as many green files as yellow ones. She reads them with far closer attention, squints over words and figures, searching for – something. Reluctance, maybe. Compassion. Affection. Anything beyond cold academic fascination. She obsesses over each decision, trying to read hidden motivations behind every proposed experiment Dr. Kinney didn’t approve or modification she suggested to the ones that went ahead. Laura spends hours trying to find warmth buried in the implacable black type.

Dr. Kinney’s dying words had been a confession of love. Laura wishes she had written that down instead.

The files are out of order, and soon enough she comes upon the reports of her own birth. August 9th, delivery uneventful. Nine hour labour.  An analysis of her as a newborn: weight, vitals, reflexes. Photographs of parts of her body, one-by-one, close up and with a tape measure wrapped around or stretched out along their length. Her baby pictures are schematics. In several, anonymous gloved hands share the frame. She wonders if each hand is Dr. Kinney’s. She wishes there was someone she could ask.

Other projects now. Other subjects. Many of the files are incomplete, or out of order. Laura wonders briefly how long these people spent in their own glass cells. If any of them managed to escape. How many of their project files end in autopsy reports. Which of them were still there when she burned the Facility to the ground.

Laura flips the page.

She has a moment of shock seeing Dr. Kinney’s name penning the next report. It is a project she has never heard of – unsurprising; the only names she knows are those she had overheard in fleeting conversations between staff. She knew Dr. Kinney sometimes worked on other projects. There are mentions of her assisting in the other files Laura already read.

But here she _authors the report_. In this, what catches Laura’s attention is that Dr. Kinney is listed as project head of science. The same as she is on Laura’s file. Reading further, Laura finds five other projects on which she is listed as the same. Two look to be tangentially related to X-23, the other three are entirely independent. Five sets of project files. Swaths of green in each one.

Laura devours them.

They’re much shorter than the X-23 file. This, too, is unsurprising; her project reports begin before she is even born, and it is exceptional for one of Sutter’s human subjects to survive past a few years. But besides this, there is very little difference. In structure, they are almost identical. Laura’s throat thickens as she slowly realizes this. Almost identical.

Different experiments, of course, depending on specifics – and with varying degrees of success. But the same tone of voice, the same notes in the margins in careful pen, written in succinct, clinical prose. One of the subjects is a boy, only a few years older than Laura and very visibly a mutant. He had lasted almost a year. His file, unlike hers, is absolutely filled with glossy photographs. Thorough, invasive documentation of his extensive physical mutations. In one of the photographs she thinks she recognizes the pattern of Dr. Kinney’s skirt, and her stomach twists painfully. The folder ends with an autopsy report; Laura slams closed the file and roughly throws open the next one.

A young woman. Laura vaguely recognizes the project name. Her file is filled with a brutal schedule of experiments, back to back procedures at a frequency Laura had never even come close to. Laura checks the dates and recognizes one immediately. It is the same day Rice blasted her with radiation until her healing factor manifested to save her life. The day her claws burst out for the first time. Dr. Kinney had been there to watch, Laura remembers.

Did she leave after Laura had fallen unconscious? How long did she wait before she left to go experiment on this other girl?

The thought makes something hurt in Laura’s chest, makes her breathe heavier. She presses a palm to her sternum and squeezes to try to make the feeling go away. Laura scours through the papers for a moment more before she gathers them all up and bolts, single-minded, out of the room. Her eyes are hot. She stomps purposefully through the halls until she throws open the doors to Cyclops’ office and drops the documents on his desk like they are burning her. He briefly startles when the papers hit his desk, then looks up at Laura with his full attention.

“Sarah Kinney,” she begins, and finds she is not sure how to continue. There is rage, or something like it, bubbling up that she has only just now become aware of. She cannot put a name to the feeling vibrating under her skin. “Worked on other projects,” she tries. Cyclops opens one folder, flips through for a moment, then shuts it.

“We were aware of these already, Laura,” he says patiently. “Have you found out something new?”

“She was the project _head_ on these,” Laura raises her voice. She has to strain against the sudden thickness in her throat. “The reports list her as Head of Science.”

Cyclops gives her a slow nod. “She led many projects for Weapon X.”

He is missing her point but cannot see it, and Laura’s frustration grows with each of his carefully chosen words. She struggles to clarify her meaning. “I thought,” she falters, hurt. “I thought she was only project head with me.”

The phrasing catches him off guard, Laura can see it in the way he stiffens in his chair and hesitates before he speaks again.

“The X-23 project was the reason they brought Sarah Kinney on,” he tells her after a beat. “But she was a valuable geneticist. Most of their scientists worked on multiple—"

“Did she love them?” The words burst out of Laura when the feeling in her chest comes to a crescendo. She gestures wildly at the papers. “Did she love _them_ too?”

The question hangs heavy in the air between them. Laura cannot read his eyes behind the quartz lenses, but she can see his face soften around them, into an expression she has never seen on him before. For a moment, she just breathes through the silence. Her chest rises and falls in the red-tinted reflection.

“No, Laura,” he says finally. “I don’t think she loved any of them.”

He has answered the question she came for, but the feeling in her chest stays. Laura does not turn to leave. And Cyclops continues looking up at her, expectant. She knows what he is waiting for her to ask.

Laura gathers the files back up into her arms. She turns and leaves and shuts the door behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone has any other ideas for vignettes involving X-23, let me know in the comments :)


End file.
